I did say sorry to my mum, for being the way I was when I was a teenager. You become a parent and go, “Oh my God, this is what they were doing.”
Who most deserves an apology from you, and why?
Question
What is your worst intellectual habit?
Craft & work
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
What are you still hoping to finish?
Death & what remains
Question
How would you describe yourself in three words?
Identity & self
Question
What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?
Daily life
Question
What keeps you awake at night?
Daily life
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A fixed Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
To two ex-girlfriends, for my cowardice.
Rosanna Greenstreet, The Q&A, The Guardian, 21 March 2009 source ↗
Others on this question
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Victoria Pendleton
British cyclist
Lots of people, mainly for being so absent from their lives while I was concentrating on sport. I’d also like to say sorry to my dad’s mum, because, aged four, I told her she was the worst cook in the world.
To my mother for disappointing her. Mummy wanted me to be a different sort of person from who I am, but one can’t change oneself.
Douglas Stuart
Scottish fashion designer and novelist
To my younger self. I was incredibly self-loathing and self-doubting, and I’m still undoing that damage 30 years later.
More from Alain de Botton
View profile →I’m prone to overexplaining things –- when my own understanding of them is shaky. The better I know something, the shorter my prose.
"You can't write."
To make www.theschooloflife.com a global brand (to open a branch in Australia). To make www.living-architecture.co.uk flourish. To write good books.
Fear, anxiety, longing, love, art, beauty.
A few years ago, I started wearing this as a uniform of sorts. It has removed all my anxieties about clothing. I now know what I'll be wearing in both summer and winter.
failure. I dream of chapters I haven't written and things that I forgot to say in books I wrote three or seven years ago.
More on failure & regret
- What has been your biggest disappointment? 374 answers
- If you could edit your past, what would you change? 210 answers
- What is the worst thing anyone has said to you? 129 answers
- Which moment embarrassed you most? 126 answers
- How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure? 82 answers
- What is the hardest thing that has happened to you, and what did you carry out of it? 41 answers
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Judith Kerr, Sandi Toksvig, Lolita Chakrabarti, Viv Albertine, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Julie Andrews
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